Founder of GitHub’s Self-Description: 7 Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs

GitHub Founder's Entrepreneurial Advice: 7 Tips

There are three key points to starting a business: saving money, saving money, and still saving money.

Author: Chris Wanstrath, Co-Founder of GitHub

Compiled by: Peng SUN, Foresight News

Editor’s note: While compiling GitHub co-founder Chris Wanstrath’s account of his entrepreneurial history, I was reminded of “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” by Max Weber, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. GitHub’s entrepreneurial history embodies the universal ascetic ethic and spirit of capitalism: exercise self-restraint, earn money through legitimate means, everything is calculable, do not engage in unnecessary spending, and reinvest profits. Of course, the secret to GitHub’s success is also to focus on building a product that users love and keep them on their platform.

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GitHub is the world’s largest online open-source code hosting service platform, which began development on October 1, 2007, and launched a test version in February 2008. In the first few years, GitHub’s revenue grew steadily, with about $1 million in the first year, $3 million in the second year, and $9 million in the third year. Overall, GitHub was profitable almost every month before it raised $100 million from a16z at a valuation of $750 million in 2012. The only month we didn’t make a profit was “Red October,” when we hired Kyle Aster and Ryan Tomayko. It was a gamble we made at the time, and it paid off handsomely later on.

In fact, it is not easy to keep a self-sufficient start-up profitable. So, how did we manage to do it?

First, when the company was just starting out, we as founders took very little salary. If GitHub’s monthly revenue grew enough, we would pay ourselves more. In the end, it took us over a year to receive full pay. During this time, we lived on savings.

Secondly, there were business transactions. At first, we worked with Engine Yard, putting Engine Yard’s logo in the footer of our website and providing free GitHub accounts to its customers; as part of the business deal, they provided us with free hosting. After parting ways with Engine Yard, we began a similar partnership with Rackspace around October 2009. For nearly three years, the footer of GitHub had the words “Powered by Rackspace Hosting’s dedicated servers and cloud computing.” Some say there are no ads on GitHub, but that’s not entirely accurate, perhaps a well-intentioned lie. In fact, from snapshots of the website saved by the Internet Archive, it can be seen that GitHub’s website had Engine Yard ads and Rackspace ads until around July-August 2012.

Internet Archive: April 3, 2009, GitHub official website

Internet Archive: October 26, 2010, GitHub official website

Thirdly, we are very familiar with the financial situation. We not only calculate annual and monthly income, but also track details such as cancellations, refunds, and registrations on a daily, hourly, and even secondly basis. Every morning, I log in to the bank account and copy the balance to a shared spreadsheet. Founders regularly discuss financial issues: every day in our chat room and in regular face-to-face meetings. We only recruit new employees or make purchases within our financial capabilities. We are very cautious in the use of funds and never overspend.

Fourthly, reinvest profits into the company’s business. When we make a profit, the money does not go into our pockets, but is used to make T-shirts, attend meetings, make marketing materials, and so on. All the money we earn is directly used to develop GitHub.

Fifthly, seek multiple sources of income related to the GitHub website. For example, our merchandise store makes money, we sell git training services, we have a paid list recruitment website, and we even try technology conferences like CodeConf and PyCodeConf. It turns out that holding such conferences is difficult and expensive, but interesting.

Sixthly, try to contact as many customers as possible, which means adapting to different environments, expanding the customer base, and reflecting this in our products.

• June 2009 launched the first version of GitHub Enterprise Edition, GitHub:FI, just one year after GitHub was launched.

• June 2010 launched GitHub Organizations/Teams.

• June 2011, GitHub for Mac was released.

• May 2012, GitHub for Windows was released.

As I said in my 2010 interview about entrepreneurship, profitability, and pride, “You need to pay attention to every expense before (and even after) you make a profit.”

However, the most important thing we can do is to be fully committed to our product. There is no better marketing than loving your product and wanting others to use it with you. Our daily lives are filled with advertising, so recommendations from friends are like gold. GitHub Desktop exists to help these recommendations turn into active users more quickly. We see them as the entry point to Git and GitHub, helping people gradually adapt to this new way of working.

So, what have we achieved? In essence, three things: Frugal consumption, reduced costs, and building a product that users love and keep!

Note: Blocking all articles only represents the author’s point of view and does not constitute investment advice

Original link: https://www.bitpush.news/articles/4435081

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